This exchange involves DoctorJoeE, Geni and Finkellium, and watch them duke it out, folks. Am I the only one to notice the irony of a Wikipedia “citizen scholar” insisting that an old-school printed book can’t be challenged by what one finds online?

I particularly like the line about “The Fixers” being “meticulously researched,” considering all the holes I have shot in it.

Dr.JoeE sounds like someone who believes that anything in print must be true, and that analytical research, unless it’s in print, is bunk. Obviously someone who doesn’t read everything sent to him either, just skims headlines.

I still don’t get why the incident even needs to be included in the Wikipedia articles in the first place. If there’s uncertainty about whether this happened or not, why does it have to be part of Healy’s and/or Beery’s stories, since Wikipedia entries are intended to be brief, factual articles?

It seems that Wikipedia has its own version of Councilman Jamm in the person of DoctorJoeE, whose snarky quip about the Los Angeles historians being “one heck of a softball team” is the sort of maladroit knee-slapper that might be uttered by his fictional counterpart on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” (Guess you’ve been “Jammed,” Larry! LOL) Assuming the cryptid DoctorJoeE to be an actual person–and not, as one might expect, a lunatic comic invention–the remainder of his comments would be funny if they weren’t so ridiculous. His reference to some sort of occult Larry Harnisch “agenda” suggests there is more than a little Alex Jones woven into the nutty professor’s DNA. Which might explain why he is so fiercely defensive of Fleming’s novel–sorry, book–unless he happens to be the author himself, which is entirely possible under the circumstances.

I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time, Larry, and to the extent that a devotion to facts may be called an agenda, I suppose it could be said that you have one. Given his baffling casuistry in defense of Fleming’s inaccuracies over contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the events, DoctorJoeE’s devotions are a tad murkier. I’m reminded of the old joke about the fanatic who argued, “Don’t confuse me with facts, I want the truth!”